Re: Boring service for Surefire® and other aluminum or titanium lights
Tritium is like Bacon, it makes everything better. And just like Bacon some people serve it up better than others. Take Jeff Hanko for instance. What a master craftsman. If you want a benchmark for the finest hand machined work, Jeff is a perfect choice. Jeff has been doing slots since his return at $10 a pop.
I'm wondering why it costs you so much more Barry? I realize there are a lot of variables that include the tooling and machinery used. Jeff of course does his work with an old chinese manual lathe still. So, I don't guess it could be more labor and skill intensive than that. Mohan does them Pro Bono on a very limited basis using the most minimal of tools, he taught himself with the help of a local machinist. My surmise therefore is that you have much more sophisticated machinery and therefore much more cost recovery is necessary. Is that it?
Also, when working with Jeff, the turnaround time is very short. Jeff is very focused on his patrons and doesn't like to hold things in his shop for long. I notice that sometimes there is a significant delay when sending items your way. Again, my surmise is that it has to do with perhaps the variety and amount of non flashaholic work you might be doing. It probably takes a big variety of customers to fund your operation, so our delights have to be scheduled amongst more 'industrial' requirements of other customers. Yes?
At any rate, these lights look marvelous. Yummy Bacony Goodness! Thanks for sharing!
When you have to bring income to support you and your family, you have to charge "enough" to achieve a fair balance in order to maintain a relative "steady" amount of work, week to week, month to month. If you charge too much, you don't bring enough work. If you charge too little, you get too much work but you don't bring enough revenue. So whether you are doing a Tritiun slot, or making a custom bearing for a motor, your time as a machinist has a price, and the only thing fair is to charge everyone the same - that is how a shop determines what is the "shop rate" - that they need to charge in order to survive through the ups/downs. Just like any/all other businesses.
Without a question, Jeff is an outstanding machinist - I would even say an artist. His attention to detail is incredible. But my educated guess is that Jeff is likely not doing the outstanding machining he does for a living, as a full time job. If it takes Jeff 1/2 hour to an hour to setup and cut one slot, and he is charging $10/each one, he is making about $10/hour. That is not even enough to maintain equipment, buy new tooling as it wears out, let alone generate enough revenue to make a living as a machinist. That is just my educated guess.
And of course there is nothing wrong with Jeff charging $10/each, or other folks charging even less to do work. They must charge whatever they feel their time is worth, and I know many (which like you said) charge nothing since it is a hobby for them. I even know software developers who work for months and months, spend $100's of dollars developing software, only to give it away for free for others to use. Nothing wrong with this either.
But, in terms of shop rates, you can't do an apples to apples comparison between a full-time machinist (making a living as a machinist) and anyone else doing it as a hobby/side business. The revenue requirements are different. I feel that is "the" main difference you see in pricing/shop rates. If you were to visit any machinist (that works as a machinist for a living), you would see that they will likely charge anywhere from $40-50/hour on the low end, to $80-100 and up at the higher end. And that is assuming they have the time to talk to you as most shops would not even bother with small jobs as the ones we discuss here in this forum. If it is a CNC shop, and you are not talking "at least" in the "hundred" or more, most CNC shops will not even talk to you.
Will
Images below are a Ti-6-4 knife scale into which a 2x12mm slot was milled. The scale is about 3mm thick & the trit is Norland suspended in the slot.
